Simple level desing help

[The Judge]

Well, I used to be a seasoned Doom level designer but now I've forgotten almost everything I knew. So, I am here to ask all of you to give me some help (I am using WinDEU). I'm working on a map and this one room has two sectors. one is raised about 30 units higher then the other. What I'm trying to do is make a small stair to lead up to the raised sector by attatching it to a passable line. What I do is make the vertices, then select them in counter-clockwise (I know that's not how walls are made but this is no wall, right?) and press Shift-Insert and then Insert to make it a sector. What turns out is a big jumble of nonsense and hall of mirrors effect. I tried just making a box in the room not attatched to anything and the same thing occurs. Please, someone show me the light!

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"Don't speak, just die."
Dante from DMC2

[The Judge]

I believe the problem is i need to make the stair, then make the sector and select the box too so that the sector doesn't include the box. This is really stupid and is a real pain in the ass because the level's basic shape is done and now i have to go in and start deleting sectors! Why does Doom have to be so stupid!? Now I remember why I went on to Build for Duke3D. Anyway, if someone has a way to help me with this I would appreciate it.

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"Don't speak, just die."
Dante from DMC2

[Doom_Dude]

I'm waiting for some WinDEU user to come along and help you out. I never used it myself and I'm a DoomCAD user. I would say that it shouldn't matter if you make the stairs or the raised sector first as long as you make them in order. Meaning make stair one, then two, then the raised sector or visa versa. That's all I can say cause I have no idea about this Shift-insert function. Anyhow hope you figure it out or somebody wanders along and knows how to explain WinDeu stuff. http://forums.newdoom.com/UBB/wink.gif

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----Linedef Technician and Sector Maker Upper----

[Exl]

/me is a WinDEU user! http://forums.newdoom.com/UBB/wink.gif

I think you might want to make sure that the stair sector's sidedefs have the right sector references. When creating a sector within a sector in WinDEU you always need to check for that. You'll really have to juggle with those references when you're doing more complex geometry.

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WhackEd 1.23.199 (http://home.wanadoo.nl/dennis.meuwissen/whacked)

[The Judge]

Well, that's just it! It's not anything complex so I don't see why it has to be such a pain. I tried juggling and got nothing. And I tried to get DoomCAD working and I read somewhere that it doesn't run on XP so I'm screwed for that. Well, I guess I have to try and learn Deep or DeepSea cause that's the only other Windows based editor that didn't suck. Thanks for trying people.

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"Don't speak, just die."
Dante from DMC2

[Exl]

Errors can sometimes be easier than they seem. Tried the mapping tutorial that comes with WinDEU? It might clear up your mind about Doom editing again.

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WhackEd 1.23.199 (http://home.wanadoo.nl/dennis.meuwissen/whacked)

[Aliotroph?]

Gah! WinDEU angers me to no end. It's like using crappy old DEU 5.21 except even less stable/functional. Reminds me of the days when I used to build rooms by adding all the vertices and then putting lines accoross them and then making sectors. Then I'd find out I had to change the geometry. Grrr.

I use DeePsea. I just makes more sense. So does WadAuthor even though I don't like it. DeePsea is good in that it's well supported by it's author. WadAuthor is good in that it can be fast (if you like building out of sector prefabs) and lots of people have written docs for it.

I wouldn't mind DoomCAD but it's got issues it needs cleared up and Matt Tagliaferri hasn't released the code (I don't think). I can't remember the deal with it not running in XP. Doesn't make much sense to me since it was written in Visual Basic which only works on Windows anyway.

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"Once in a while a programmer really writes something he's proud of, a slick, elegant, blazingly fast routine that stands as a benchmark against which other code will be judged by. However, this is not the case with TED's fill routine. This slow, stupid algorithm will casually fill one plane of data in a painfully creeping manner. Press ESC when it gets confused." - John Romero on TED (Tile EDitor)

Aliotroph?.postCount++;

[The Judge]

Yah Aliotroph? I was just good with WinDEU back in the days when Doom was still new and I tried Deep but never got used to it (then again, the levels i made back then sucked ass). Well, I will take your advice sinse you have an insane amount of posts so you must know your stuff. Thank you everyone for the input.

[ToXiCFLUFF]

Hmm... I don't really get why people think WadA is fast. It's easier to learn, but sector prefabs is a slower way of working than line-drawing. Plus you have to press alt-enter(properties) to get any information on anything, which slows down the process a hell of a lot.

But if you want something which is easy to learn and works well (aside from the occasional map-massacre), get Wadauthor.

[iori]

i used to use winDEU, and still do when i want a healthy dose of nostalgia, but wadauthor is the editor for me until i can afford deepsea. I want deesea alot, but its not free like wadauthor so.... Anyways building out of prefabs is not that bat once you get used to it, and you can go back and add detail into a level once you finish an area whereas windeu you have to plan EVERYTHING from the start because going back and adding shit is not impossible, but it takes soo much time, and includes undoing alot of the stuff that you made before.

[Doom_Dude]

I'm tempted to buy DeepSea just for the hell of it. Not that I hate DooMCAD but it can be a pain sometimes. Oh well maybe after I finish upgrading my 32 maps. Does DS have a sector drawing mode?

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----Linedef Technician and Sector Maker Upper----

[The Judge]

I think we should all go with DeepSea because i got it workin no problem. And to solve the problem easily for the whole buying of the program, get KaZaa and search for the full version or crack or a serial by looking for documents. I know its not a very nice thing to do to all those people who battle the many many characters that goes into programming but some of us want everythin for nothing. I can't be expected to pay for Adobe Photoshop and 3D Studios Max 5 but i need these programs!

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"Don't speak, just die."
Dante from DMC2

[Ace]

http://forums.newdoom.com/UBB/smilies/cwm25.gif
no thanks kazaa http://forums.newdoom.com/UBB/smilies/cwm10.gif

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....summoned the ghosts of the suitors, and in his hand he held the fair golden wand with which he seals men's eyes in sleep or wakes them just as he pleases; with this he roused the ghosts and led them, while they followed whining and gibbering behind him.

[Aliotroph?]

Hehe, WadAuthor isn't actually free either. It's just easy to reinstall it every month or so. DeePsea would be easy to pirate since you just get 1MB e-mail or floppy disk when you register. 99.999% of people don't do that though because we're scared deepteam would stop supporting it. If he disappeared (like most of those other editor guys) and never updated or shipped more disks, then I'd pirate it all over the place. http://forums.newdoom.com/UBB/wink.gif

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"Once in a while a programmer really writes something he's proud of, a slick, elegant, blazingly fast routine that stands as a benchmark against which other code will be judged by. However, this is not the case with TED's fill routine. This slow, stupid algorithm will casually fill one plane of data in a painfully creeping manner. Press ESC when it gets confused." - John Romero on TED (Tile EDitor)

Aliotroph?.postCount++;

[Doom_Dude]

Whoah!! Don't even think of mentioning Warez on these here boards. Not only is it unwanted and pisses people off it's also illegal. So please don't even mention anything about any warez. If we were to allow ppl to talk warez and to trade warez links and such the boards could find themselves shut down. That's not good so don't mention any warez again in the future. Also the author of DeepSea visits here and is bound to read your Warez intentions.

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----Linedef Technician and Sector Maker Upper----

[Aliotroph?]

Yep warez is bad. Abandonware is sorta grey though. Romero supports that stuff though. Hehe. Like I said though deepteam and his company would have to disappear off the face of the Earth before I'd start spreading copies of his stuff. Then it wouldn't matter cause he wouldn't lose the money he wasn't getting anyway. Until then I support his efforts cause it's good software. http://forums.newdoom.com/UBB/smile.gif

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"Once in a while a programmer really writes something he's proud of, a slick, elegant, blazingly fast routine that stands as a benchmark against which other code will be judged by. However, this is not the case with TED's fill routine. This slow, stupid algorithm will casually fill one plane of data in a painfully creeping manner. Press ESC when it gets confused." - John Romero on TED (Tile EDitor)

Aliotroph?.postCount++;

[iori]

your right. Anyway i can still reinstall wadauthour as much as i want, its not my fault i can exploit a simple flaw in the rgistraition system...aka unzipping lol! I never liked doomcad cause its sooooo sloowwwww....and just looks bad IMO (no offence D_D). ive gotten used to making sectors using prefabs and i can actually say i enjoy it. It makes all the vertex, line and sector making redundant and actually prefab making is fast.

[Doom_Dude]

LOL, no offence taken.

To each his own and the editor of choice is usually the one your used to. I'm used to DoomCAD and I'll always use it. DeepSea might be tempting but it'll take some effort for me to change and I don't want to change. I also don't trust WadAuthor anymore after it destroyed that one map during a save. If you use it backup often.

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----Linedef Technician and Sector Maker Upper----

[Aliotroph?]

My mapping style causes more errors in WadAuthor than I'd have if I wrote my maps with a hex editor.

Jive claims to get e-mail from Matt Tagliaferri. I don't get this. How come we can't get him for something as simple as getting DoomCAD code to try and tweak it a bit???

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"Once in a while a programmer really writes something he's proud of, a slick, elegant, blazingly fast routine that stands as a benchmark against which other code will be judged by. However, this is not the case with TED's fill routine. This slow, stupid algorithm will casually fill one plane of data in a painfully creeping manner. Press ESC when it gets confused." - John Romero on TED (Tile EDitor)

Aliotroph?.postCount++;

[Doom_Dude]

It would be nice if someone could get the code and do some upgrading on DoomCAD. Oh well, when he didn't answer my email I figured he wasn't interested in letting anybody else have the code. I'm also pretty sure that was the right Matt Tagliaferri. http://forums.newdoom.com/UBB/smilies/cwm1.gif

At least he could've answered. My email wasn't demanding or anything. *shrugs* As far as I remember I even thanked him for making it in the first place. If it wasn't for DoomCAD I may not have made my Vilecore megawad. Thanks Matt wherever you are. http://forums.newdoom.com/UBB/biggrin.gif Well excuse me I have to go back into DoomCAD and work somemore on Map04. http://forums.newdoom.com/UBB/wink.gif

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----Linedef Technician and Sector Maker Upper----

[deepteam]

What Alio says is right on the mark - thanks. Nothing I can add http://forums.newdoom.com/UBB/smile.gif

It is true that whatever editor one finally masters becomes the one of choice. Sort of like becoming a chevy or ford fan.

[Aliotroph?]

You're welcome deepteam. How long do you get rights on DeePsea after you stop updating it anyway?

What angers me is companies that stop selling a product and then go after you for copying something they haven't sold in 5 or 10 years. I always figured, if you don't want to sell it then why not just make it free? If it's old software it won't hurt sales of new software. And if it's good there's no point in saying everyone can't have it (or in Microsoft's case, acting like it never existed).

I e-mailed Matt too. Same thing. No response. I even e-mailed the guys who claimed to be making an improved version of DoomCAD. No response there either. That kinda pissed me off.

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"Once in a while a programmer really writes something he's proud of, a slick, elegant, blazingly fast routine that stands as a benchmark against which other code will be judged by. However, this is not the case with TED's fill routine. This slow, stupid algorithm will casually fill one plane of data in a painfully creeping manner. Press ESC when it gets confused." - John Romero on TED (Tile EDitor)

Aliotroph?.postCount++;

[deepteam]

Copyrights are for Life + 70 years (or if work of corporate authorship, the shorter of 95 years from publication, or 120 years from creation.

So that's a hell of a long time http://forums.newdoom.com/UBB/smilies/cwm20.gif

[Aliotroph?]

Heh, someone told me it was much shorter for software stuff but that never made much sense to me anyway.

I suppose Disney's going to be in a pickle in a hurry. Some of their stuff will expire within a few decades and they'll be whining like little children about it.

So who owns DeePsea if you die and your company disappears then? Is it your family or something?

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"Once in a while a programmer really writes something he's proud of, a slick, elegant, blazingly fast routine that stands as a benchmark against which other code will be judged by. However, this is not the case with TED's fill routine. This slow, stupid algorithm will casually fill one plane of data in a painfully creeping manner. Press ESC when it gets confused." - John Romero on TED (Tile EDitor)

Aliotroph?.postCount++;

[Pate]

Disney won't have any problem with copyright expiring. They'll just pay some congressmen to extend copyright yet again, as they did in the Sonny Bono case recently. (and several times earlier, actually)

What makes the whole case hypocritical is that Disney made all of its money in the early 1900s by exploiting works whose copyright had expired. (seek the net for "disney" and "Winnie the Pooh" for more information)

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Tired of crappy Doom editors? So was I, that's why I'm coding my own (http://www.hut.fi/~jpakkane/why/).

[Ninja_of_DooM]

To answer your question DD, yes deepsea does have a sector tool. It's linedrwaw mode. Makes simple sectors easy to build. http://forums.newdoom.com/UBB/smilies/cwm4.gif

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Member of the NewDooM megawad team. Map 14: Jail Break.

My own little bunch of WADs. Containing 3 individual maps. Download it here (http://sparky.suhost.com/pub/hosted/ninja/ninja_of_doom_wads.zip)

Thanks to Sparky for the hosting.
If you would wish to host this then contact me at by E-mail. mailto:AndrewAFE@aol.comAndrewAFE@aol.com</A>

Hint to all Katana owners: Never sit on yours, It'll give you a very sore ass indeed.

[Exl]

To get back about that Matt Tagliaferri guy, on the DLW forums Jive posted a message about a reply he got from Matt. In short, DoomCAD was written in 16 bit Visual Basic 4 and used a lot of external libraries. Problem is, those libraries don't work in VB6. Though luck.
Also, here's a post I found somewhere with google:

<BLOCKQUOTE><font size="1" face="Trebuchet MS, Arial, Helvetica, serif">quote:</font><hr width="100%" size="1" noshade><font face="Trebuchet MS, Arial, Helvetica, serif" size="2">To: quake-dev@gamers.org
Subject: RE: The GUI of Choice?
From: matt.tagliaferri@pcohio.com (Matt Tagliaferri)
In-Reply-To: &lt;199605072215.PAA29174@dfw-ix5.ix.netcom.com&gt;

Date: Wed, 08 May 1996 08:27:00 -0500

I agree with all the Visual Basic comments for ease of programming, etc,
and would like to throw Delphi into the ring. I wrote DoomCad IN VB,
and it was a popular editor for its ease of use, but unpopular due to
its speed. I then rewrote it in Delphi, and got the same look but much
faster speed.</font><hr width="100%" size="1" noshade></BLOCKQUOTE>

Makes you wonder what happened to that Delphi DoomCAD doesn't it?

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WhackEd 1.23.199 (http://home.wanadoo.nl/dennis.meuwissen/whacked)

[Doom_Dude]

I don't understand. Is he saying that DoomCAD can't be upgraded / changed in any way without going to VB6?

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----Linedef Technician and Sector Maker Upper----

[Exl]

Let's just say that converting the code over to VB6 would require the rewrite of a lot of code, even including basic wad-related stuff.

Doom Legacy Wad forum thread: http://forums3.asp-dev.co.uk/Doom_Wad_Station_Forum/topic.asp?TOPIC_ID=36&SearchTerms=doomcad

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WhackEd 1.23.199 (http://home.wanadoo.nl/dennis.meuwissen/whacked)

[Doom_Dude]

What I'm wondering is why does it have to be converted to VB6??????????????

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[Exl]

Heh, keep your shirt on Doom_Dude! http://forums.newdoom.com/UBB/wink.gif

Besides the fact that VB4 is practically unused by now (especially the 16 bit version), a VB6 version would also be useful if anyone would want to make any decent changes to it, like *adding* stuff. I doubt anyone still has a 16 bit version of VB4 around, let alone actually use it.

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WhackEd 1.23.199 (http://home.wanadoo.nl/dennis.meuwissen/whacked)

[Doom_Dude]

Oh ok!! http://forums.newdoom.com/UBB/wink.gif Now that I understand I can keep my shirt on. lol.

I suppose converting it to VB6 would be a real pain. Oh well, no wonder nobody wants to do it.

There was a Delphi version? Is that good or bad? lol

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----Linedef Technician and Sector Maker Upper----

[Aliotroph?]

Hmmm, sounds like the stuff I heard about Wintex recently. Same problem essentially I think.

Sucks much.

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"Once in a while a programmer really writes something he's proud of, a slick, elegant, blazingly fast routine that stands as a benchmark against which other code will be judged by. However, this is not the case with TED's fill routine. This slow, stupid algorithm will casually fill one plane of data in a painfully creeping manner. Press ESC when it gets confused." - John Romero on TED (Tile EDitor)

Aliotroph?.postCount++;

[deepteam]

On copyrights: the rules have changed over the years. As Pate noted, Disney got them to extend.

Wintex isn't pure VB. All the detailed work is written in C. This code is stored in the DLL and linked to via VB.

There was a prototype Delphi Doomcad made -DCAD 1.0 - but it was never finished. All it does is open a level and you can scroll and zoom. Even that is weird, the lines thickness zooms too! IOW, the lines get really fat.

[Doom_Dude]

<BLOCKQUOTE><font size="1" face="Trebuchet MS, Arial, Helvetica, serif">quote:</font><hr width="100%" size="1" noshade><font face="Trebuchet MS, Arial, Helvetica, serif" size="2">IOW, the lines get really fat.</font><hr width="100%" size="1" noshade></BLOCKQUOTE>


http://forums.newdoom.com/UBB/smilies/cwm3.gif

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